Chests and Cabinets - Fine Woodworking

34

Christian beCksvoort

Classic

Storage

Cupboard

I

n “Shaker Chest of Drawers” (p. 24),

I wrote about a low chest of drawers

and focused on its case construction,

drawer runner system, and using a shopmade

jig and router to cut dadoes and dovetail slots

in the carcase. Since then, a client asked me

to build a large cupboard to use in a kitchen.

This piece (and this chapter) picks up

where “Shaker Chest of Drawers” left off. I’ll

expand on how I approach Shaker casework,

showing you how to apply the three-sided

face frame to the front. I’ll also walk you

through how I fit and install drawers. Also,

because the drawers are so wide, I included a

simple but effective center guide that keeps

big drawers from binding.

The way I approached the doors is ap-

propriate for almost any Shaker piece, so the

editors gave that technique its own spotlight

(see “Frame-and-Panel Doors Made Easier”

on p. 42). By the way, because this piece will

live in a kitchen, I sized the drawers to hold

cutlery, kitchen linens, and even pots and

pans. But this classic storage piece can

be adapted to any room of the house.

That’s what the Shakers would have done.

Large panels can

be a challenge

Other than the size of the panels, the

carcase construction on this piece is almost

the same as the low chest in “Shaker Chest

of Drawers.” There are a few differences:

Because of the size of the pieces, I used a

jigsaw instead of a bandsaw to cut the arches

into the bottoms of the two sides. This chest

has a permanent middle shelf that the low

chest doesn’t, and also because of the size of

the pieces, I got creative about dovetailing

and how I transferred the tails to the pin

boards. I laid out and cut the tails first on the

subtop, then moved to the half-blind pins

on the sides. I rested the long workpieces

on the ground and tacked the top in place

with a small brad, creating a freestanding

inverted U. I stood on a stool to transfer the

tails to the pin board, and then cut the pins

at the bench. Once the dovetails, dadoes,

and rabbets were cut, I glued the subtop and

bottom to the sides.

With the carcase together, it’s time to work

on the web frames and runners that will hold

the drawers in place and allow them to run

smoothly. For step-by-step details on this,

see “Rails and Dividers Guide the Drawers,”

p. 32. To separate the top drawers, I added a

centered vertical drawer divider and behind

that a center runner. Although the three

wide drawers at the bottom get an added cen-

ter guide, don’t tackle that until you’ve glued

the frames in place and made the drawers.

(continued on p. 39)